strokinit Chapter 162 Second Attack
Chapter 162 Second Attack
Chapter 162 An Attack
His flight posture was elegant and efficient, his eyes were sharp, and his strategies were clear.
In his several encounters with Angelina, he effortlessly extricated himself from her clutches.
Just as Angelina showed signs of fatigue from her long period of focus, Cedric swooped down like a precise falcon, cleanly and efficiently seizing the Golden Snitch and bringing Hufflepuff another brilliant comeback victory.
After landing, he even politely nodded to the distraught Angelina as an apology.
This defeat has made Gryffindor's hopes of winning the championship this school year extremely slim.
With each defeat, Harry could only sit in the stands like all the other students, watching helplessly as his house fell, watching Wood grow more silent and haggard with each failure, while he himself was powerless to do anything about it. This sense of powerlessness was more tormenting than any confinement.
Time slipped by quietly amidst the Quidditch defeats and daily studies, and by the end of November, Harry and Ron's long, seemingly endless confinement finally came to an end.
Filch reluctantly returned Ron's freedom, and Lockhart, on the other hand, lost his legitimate reason to detain Harry.
However, the peaceful days did not last long.
Just a few weeks later, in mid-December as the Christmas holiday atmosphere grew stronger, Lockhart began to "coincidentally" run into Harry in the hallway again.
"Oh, Harry, my dear boy!" he would call out to Harry in that infectious, booming voice, as if it were just a casual remark. "My public correspondence has piled up again, and I simply can't handle it all by myself. You know, maintaining this 'bond' with the fans takes a tremendous amount of energy! How about coming to my office after school to 'help out'? Consider it—a reunion of our past 'collaborations'?"
Lockhart's reputation among students has miraculously rebounded recently, thanks to the fact that he has indeed brought out a number of different magical items in class and successfully completed several teaching demonstrations with them.
Influenced by him, the idea of "using clever magical tools to help solve problems" has surprisingly become a small trend among some students.
In this context, Harry found it difficult to firmly refuse the professor's "small, kind" request, despite his deep reluctance.
So he would still occasionally be pulled into Lockhart's office to continue that agonizing task of copying letters.
That night.
After enduring another few hours of mental torture in Lockhart's office, racking his brains to use the most extravagant words to praise the fans who sent him bizarre gifts, Harry was finally able to escape.
Night had fallen, and the castle corridors were deserted, with only the torches on the walls casting his shadow, which flickered and stretched.
He rubbed his aching wrist, wanting nothing more than to get back to the warm common room in the Gryffindor Tower as soon as possible.
However, just as he passed through the empty corridor on the second floor—
That voice! It appeared again!
But this time, it was no longer vague or elusive, no longer a whisper that was hard to catch.
It became incredibly clear and chilling, as if it were right next to Harry.
"...I smell...blood..." The hoarse, sinister voice seeped into Harry's ears, sending chills down his spine. "...Tearing and killing...it's nearby..."
Fear gripped Harry for a moment, but a stronger urge to find out the truth propelled him forward. Almost instinctively, he held his breath, tiptoed, and followed the increasingly clear, murderous voice.
The voice guided him as he wandered through the maze-like corridors.
Finally, when Harry reached an empty corridor, the voice became extremely excited and thirsty, then abruptly stopped and disappeared completely.
A deathly silence descended.
Harry's heart pounded in his chest. He looked around warily, then his gaze was drawn to the wall.
Some writing was scribbled on the wall, gleaming faintly under the burning torches. A secret room has been opened. Beware of those who are enemies of the heir.
There, beside the writing, the torchlight illuminated a startling sight: Mrs. Lorris—Filch’s emaciated cat—hanged stiffly on the torch stand, tail held high, eyes wide open, motionless as if transformed into a fur statue.
Harry gasped, his stomach churning. He had never seen anything so bizarre.
As he stared in shock at the petrified cat, a cacophony of footsteps and voices came from around the corner of the corridor behind him.
A group of students who had just finished their astronomy class appeared. They were from Slytherin and Hufflepuff, looking through their telescopes and star charts, and happily discussing the constellations they were looking at that night.
They turned the corner laughing, and then everyone's movements and voices froze instantly.
Their gazes first fell on the stiff Mrs. Lorris, eliciting gasps of horror. Then, almost everyone's eyes shifted upwards, settling on Harry, who stood beneath the eerie cat, looking utterly horrified, as if he had just committed the crime.
Time seemed to stand still.
In the crowd, Malfoy's pale face instantly lost all color, and a genuine fear flashed in his gray eyes, but almost immediately, that fear was replaced by an extremely excited and gloating expression.
He parted the crowd, took a step forward, pointed at Harry with a trembling finger, his voice rising higher and sharper with excitement, loud enough for everyone in the corridor to hear clearly:
"Murderer!" he shrieked. "You killed the cat! You killed Filch's cat! Just you wait, Potter, you're finished this time! You're absolutely finished! They'll definitely fire you!"
A chorus of agreement and gasps rippled through the Slytherin students behind him, while most of the Hufflepuff students took a step back in fright, their eyes shifting in terror between Harry and the petrified cat.
Harry opened his mouth wide, but no sound came out.
He knew that he had once again found himself in a situation where he could not defend himself.
Inside the stone house in the Forbidden Forest, Lin Qi sat at his desk.
Several sheets of parchment lay spread out on the table, covered with complex rune derivations, magical diagrams, and numerous notes on werewolf characteristics.
He held a black quill pen in his hand, intently sketching on the paper, trying to extract the core mechanism of the "Wolf Enemy Curse" from the clues Lockhart had brought back by the First Order.